{"id":17295,"date":"2026-11-13T20:31:03","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T20:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/13\/how-microsoft-outage-shows-risk-of-tech-monopolies-we-were-just-helpless-national-globalnews-ca\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T20:31:03","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T20:31:03","slug":"how-microsoft-outage-shows-risk-of-tech-monopolies-we-were-just-helpless-national-globalnews-ca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/13\/how-microsoft-outage-shows-risk-of-tech-monopolies-we-were-just-helpless-national-globalnews-ca\/","title":{"rendered":"How Microsoft outage shows risk of tech monopolies: \u2018We were just helpless\u2019 – National | Globalnews.ca"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Many businesses and consumers were unable to communicate through digital channels as a global outage of some Microsoft<\/a> services left people scrambling, and experts say this event further highlights the need for Canada to adopt more sovereign digital tech.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe fact that Canada basically closed for business because one U.S. company had a glitch on\u00a0some servers shows how dependent we are, how vulnerable we are,\u201d says Joshua Pearce, who holds the Thompson Chair of Innovation at Western University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one way the entire economy is now rolled up in these technological services [\u2026] if we want to be able to stand on our own two feet, we need to be using our own open source operating systems, be more reliant on open-source software that we have some control over instead of only relying on foreign companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

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On Thursday, the outage hit a wide range of Microsoft 365 offerings<\/a> that interact with its Exchange Online and email services.<\/p>\n

Services including Outlook, Teams and AI assistant Copilot were reported by users to be down. As of publication, Microsoft said most services had been restored but fixes were still ongoing and there was no timeline for full restoration as of 3:00 p.m. Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow the MS outage is affecting [financial] markets isn\u2019t clear, but there is little else to consider by way of influences anyway on this Friday the 13th. It\u2019s not all bad either, as spam is non-existent, though it\u2019s a reminder of the perils associated with tech dominance given widespread reliance on Outlook, Teams, Edge, Co-Pilot, Excel, Powerpoint etc,\u201d said Scotiabank vice president and head of Capital Markets Economics in a note to clients on Friday.<\/p>\n

The full extent of the fallout from the outage is unclear, but regions spanning North America to the Asia Pacific were included in Microsoft\u2019s updates, and the company reported its 365 suite of services had nearly half a billion paid subscriptions as of January.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just shocked how much white collar work depends on the single Microsoft product, and when it\u2019s down, really lots of people weren\u2019t able to do their jobs,\u201d says Emily Osborne, a policy research associate at the Canadian Shield Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was nothing we could do to sort of address the outage as it was happening \u2014 we were just helpless to Microsoft\u2019s control,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe depend on so few providers, and when the services of one of them stops working that has a huge impact on our economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Even the federal government said they were impacted by the outage, according to a statement in response to a Global News request Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Government of Canada experienced impacts from the Microsoft service outage. Ensuring government digital services are secure, reliable and resilient is a priority, and we continually assess our systems and dependencies with that objective in mind,\u201d said AI and Digital Innovation Minister Evan Solomon in a statement.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\tWhat alternatives are there?\t\t\t<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Diversifying reliance on different providers and expanding beyond some of the big American names can give businesses and consumers more options when a problem arises, experts say.<\/p>\n

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Osborne says having more sovereign digital providers is something that Canada could work on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s also certainly a role for the government to play. We\u2019ve seen lots of governments in the EU making the very active and strategic choice to move away from products delivered by American firms. So that\u2019s certainly something that Canada could consider doing to increase our resilience,\u201d says Osborne.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be hard to switch everything all at once, but there\u2019s certainly an argument to be made for starting somewhere small with some sort of government communication platform that is a sovereign alternative \u2014 a privacy-preserving alternative to Microsoft products.\u201d<\/p>\n

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